“Just For Once is an amazing album! I’ve seen and helped work with Lisa as her vocal coach from the very beginning of this process and have seen a maturity in her singing and recording that would make the best of jazz singers stand up and take notice. She is, in my estimation, in ... 'the club'”
— Claude McKnight, founder/lead tenor Take 6
“(Lisa's) is a voice that flows like raw honey, and her supple way with lyrics and melody are a bewitching combination of homage and deeply personal interpretation.”
— Rick Koster, Arts and Culture reporter, The New London Day
performance/vocal coaching bio
Lisa Marien enraptures audiences with her smooth and intuitive jazz vocal stylings. She fuses her experiences and influences to present a repertoire of classic and contemporary song that pleases music lovers of all ages. Listening to Lisa, you'll feel echoes of Sarah Vaughan's elegant phrasing, intertwined with the contemporary smoothness of Anita Baker: a warm, rich palette of sound that embraces you.
She released her debut album Just For Once, with Grammy nominated pianist John di Martino as her musical director/arranger/pianist, Vince Cherico on drums, Hans Glawischnig and James Hunter on bass, Paul Meyers on acoustic guitar, Steve Marien on saxophones, Miguel Rios, Jr. on percussion, Claude McKnight (founder/lead tenor of 10 time Grammy Award winning group Take 6) as her vocal coach, and the engineering talents of Grammy Award winner Christopher Sulit at Trading 8's Studio, and Norman Johnson at Manor Recording.
Lisa has brought her solo show to The Side Door Jazz Club in Old Lyme CT, La Grua Center in Stonington CT, The Garde Arts Center in New London CT, and Chestnut Street Playhouse in Norwich CT, and has performed jazz concerts at the Norwich Arts Center. She has also performed with world percussionist Royal Hartigan, with the New World Jazz Orchestra, with jazz ensembles The J Hunter Group and The Bob Ahern Trio, with The New London Big Band, with tribute group The Collective, with top 40 groups Odds On Favorite and After Hours, and with Christian artists Heart's Cry, Roy Dunn Maclean, Mary Shuttleworth, and Tower of Praise. A recently retired K-12 vocal music teacher, Lisa is also a professional voice actor, a vocal coach and a music education consultant.
Voiceover actor bio
Lisa Marien trained through coursework with VoiceCoaches.com; she has also been coached by Alvin Chea, SAG-AFTRA voice over professional and bass singer for 10 time Grammy Award winning a cappella group Take 6. Lisa has a warm, clear, conversational tone with a vocal age range from late 20s - mid 60s and a penchant for nuanced characters. She is adept at commercial copy from upbeat to luxurious, and narrative copy from children's books to technical reads. A veteran K-12 music teacher and experienced jazz vocalist, Lisa brings professionalism, strong reading skills, good intuition about copy intent and astute response to direction in a session.
educational consultant bio
Lisa Marien spent 35 years teaching music to students in grades K-12 in public and private schools in Norwich and New London, Connecticut. In addition to K-5 general music, she taught grade 4/5 chorus, grade 6/7/8 chorus and HS emerging choir. Lisa taught Will Schmid's World Music Drumming curriculum to students in grades 4 -8 and directed musicals for grade 4/5 students as well as grade 9-12 actors.
Lisa has a Bachelors Degree in Music Education from The University of Rhode Island and a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies from Wesleyan University (CT). She is a past multicultural music chair for CMEA, a past CT TEAM mentor, and was an active member of many committees during her teaching tenure. Lisa's expertise is in strategies for classroom management and culture in the arts specialist/essentialist classroom.
A career highlight for Lisa came in 2016, when she was the recipient of a $5000 professional development fellowship from the Fund For Teachers. With this fellowship she studied contemporary a cappella performance and arranging with Deke Sharon (Father of Contemporary A Cappella), Claude McKnight (founder/lead tenor, Take 6) , Tony Huerta (sound engineer, Take 6) and J.D. Frizzell (director, OneVoice). With her new found knowledge, Lisa founded Nathan Hale A Cappella, one of the first elementary public school a cappella groups in the US. The group performed in exhibition at NE Voices high school a cappella competition in Massachusetts four times.
In 2019, Lisa attended the Lincoln Center Summer Forum, a two week immersion focused on skills to become a teaching artist. Lisa and her arts essentialist colleagues brought these skills back to create meaningful arts integration curricula with their grade level colleagues.
Lisa has given lectures/presentations at HOTS Schools (CT), The National A Cappella Convention (TN) and at NLPS Convocations.
